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In 1997, Lemire ran for school trustee in Toronto Public School Ward P17, but lost after receiving only 2,503 votes (or 12% of the total).[3][7] In the mid-1990s he was a Canadian Armed Forces reservist.[2] In their 1997 Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. B'nai Brith Canada wrote, "Marc Lemire, webmaster of the Freedom-Site that hosts the websites of several of Canada’s most virulent antisemitic organizations such as the Heritage Front, The Canadian Patriots Network and the Citizens for Foreign Aid Reform".[8] In 1998, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation called The Canadian Patriots Network a "hate website".[9]

Lemire's involvement with Wolfgang Droege and the neo-Nazi Heritage Front group began while he was a teenager in the early 1990s. When the Heritage Front fell into crisis around 1993, he attempted independent projects on the far right, such as his Canadian Patriots Network before embarking in his online activities.[2] He resumed his activity with the Heritage Front within a few years, and according to the Heritage Front website, Lemire helped organize a Heritage Front flyer campaign in 2001. The flyers were titled in part Immigration can kill you, and claimed that there was a connection between immigration and an outbreak of tuberculosis.[10]

In August 2006, a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal found that postings by Craig Harrison on the Freedom-Site forum (an interactive message forum on Lemire's website) contained violations of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. No liability was found against Lemire, although the Tribunal did issue a decision that "compelled" Lemire to provide evidence during the hearing.[13][14] A total of eight people in Canada viewed the material.[15]

A complaint was also laid against Lemire for allegedly "communicating and/or causing to be communicated" messages in violation of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. Hearings before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal began February 2007.[16][17]

On September 2, 2009, Hadjis found Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act unconstitutional, and refused to impose a penalty on Lemire.[20] However, as Hadjis is not a judge and the tribunal is not a court, his decision does not carry sufficient weight to strike down the section as ultra vires.[20] As a result, the ruling is not binding beyond the Lemire case.[21]

Two previous decisions of the CHRT (first by a 2-member panel, and later by Chair Grant Sinclair) considered the same challenges to the amendments by the same respondents in Lemire's case - Paul Fromm in #2 and Douglas Christie / Barbara Kulaszka (and Lemire having applied and been rejected as an intervenor) in #1 - and found them constitutional.[22][23][24]

In January 2014, the Federal Court of Appeal ruled against Lemire in a decision that found Section 13 to be constitutionally valid and reinstated the penalty section and the CHRT's cease and desist order against Lemire violating Section 13, regardless of the fact that by that point the section had already been repealed by parliament.[25]